Photon held a funeral for mobile apps. Now it has $4.5M to help replace them with agents
AI startup Photon has raised $4.5 million to build tools that replace traditional mobile apps with AI agents integrated into messaging platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage. The company believes the era of downloading standalone apps is ending in favor of conversational AI interfaces.
Why it matters
This shift represents a potential fundamental change in how users interact with software and how developers distribute digital products.
The AI startup Photon is so sure that agents will eventually come to replace mobile apps that it held a funeral for the latter — yes, a real funeral in a church, with speeches and everything. Photon, which helps developers build agents that work over iMessage and WhatsApp, now has $4.5 million in seed funding to develop its products. The raise comes after the company signed up over 40,000 developers grew its revenue 10x in just four months, it says.
Photon co-founder and CEO Daniel Tian said the “ app funeral ,” held in San Francisco on September 17, was also a developer day for the startup, featuring panels from Vercel, Stripe, and OpenAI. It also included an actual coffin for app icons.
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